Benjamin Weiner

Steward Observatory, Department of Astronomy, University of Arizona

About me:
I am an Assistant Astronomer at Steward Observatory in the infrared
group, working on the
MIPS team, and on optical and infrared observed programs from the ground
and with the Hubble and Herschel satellites.
MIPS
was the far-infrared instrument on the
Spitzer satellite.
Prior to moving to Arizona, I was at Maryland working on the
Maryland-Magellan
Tunable Filter (MMTF) with Prof. Sylvain Veilleux.

I am PI of the AGHAST infrared grism spectroscopic
survey, a survey of the GOODS-N field using an infrared grism in
HST's WFC3-IR. I have been heavily involved in the CANDELS HST survey, a
multi-cycle Treasury program using HST's WFC3-IR to do imaging (and a
little spectroscopy) of five deep fields to study distant galaxies:
our goals include
obtaining deep infrared images to detect high-z galaxies, measuring galaxy masses, restframe
optical sizes, colors, and morphologies, and discovering distant supernovae.

Astronomy: instruments, teaching material

This is a brief tutorial essay intended to go over some
simple optics governing instrumentation for astronomical
telescopes, including simplified reimaging cameras and spectrographs.
The original motivation for this essay was to provide a
non-specialized answer to the question:
"Why do instruments for large telescopes have to be large?"

The tutorial covers only basic, idealized material
that astronomers should know but is paradoxically
a bit too basic or astronomy-specific to learn from an optics text
(no actual lens design, aberrations, and so on).
It may be useful for people taking or teaching a class in
observational techniques. You can read the
essay in HTML form
or follow the link within for a PDF to print.

-- If there's an image, data table, simulation model, and so on
from one of my papers or projects
that you need in digital form, please email me. Even if it's old.
I try to keep these things available for archival purposes.

Bored with the web?

The Quincy, M.E. Punk Rock Episode
The original link is dead; the Request Line zine died some
time ago and now the archive is gone too. And the link used to take you
to Sam Goody, yet another example of why the web just isn't that
interesting any more. What good is a medium that has no place for
a tribute to a TV show in which Jack Klugman warns the nation of
the dangers of punk rock?
But wait, great news! Thanks to the
Internet Archive, now you can
still visit the all-powerful
Quincy, M.E. Punk Rock Episode!